CHAPTER XI.
“ONE THREAD IN LIFE WORTH SPINNING.”
Vansittart’s heart was lighter than it had been for a long time, the day he left Charles Street for Waterloo on his way to Haslemere. He longed to see Eve Marchant, with all a lover’s longing, and he told himself that he had tested his own heart severely enough by an absence of three months, and that he had now only to discover whether the lady’s heart was in any way responsive to his own. He knew now that his love for Eve Marchant was no passing fancy, no fever of the moment; and he also told himself that if he could be fairly assured of her worthiness to be his wife, he would lose no time in offering himself as her husband. Of her father’s character, whatever it might be, of her present surroundings, however sordid and shabby, he would take no heed. He would ask only if she were pure and true and frank and honest enough for an honest man’s wife. Convinced on that point, he would ask no more.
An honest man’s wife? Was he an honest man? Was he going to give her truth in exchange for truth? Was there nothing that he must needs hold back; no secret in his past life that he must keep till his life’s end? Yes, there was one secret. He was not going to tell her of his Venetian adventure. It would grieve her woman’s heart too much to know that the man she loved had to bear the burden of another man’s blood. Nay, more, with a woman’s want of logic she might deem that impulse of a moment murder, and might refuse to give herself to a man who bore that stain upon his past.
He meant to keep his secret. He could trust Lisa not to betray him. She and her kinswoman had pledged themselves to silence; and over and above the obligation of that promise he had bound them both to him by his services, had made their lives in some wise dependent on his own welfare. No, he had no fear of treachery from them. Nor had he any fear of what the chances of time and change might bring upon him from any other belongings of the dead man—so evidently had his been one of those isolated existences which drop out of life unlamented and unremembered. He was safe on all sides; and the one lie in his life, the lie which he began when he told his mother that he had not been to Venice, must be maintained steadily, whatever conscience might urge against it.
Easter came late this year, and April, the sunny, the showery, the capricious, was flinging her restless lights and shadows over the meadows and copses as he drove from the station. He had to pass Fernhurst on his way to Redwold Towers, and it was yet earlyin the afternoon as he drove past the quaint little cottage post-office in the dip of the hill, the tiny graveyard on the higher ground, the church and parsonage. It was early enough for afternoon-tea, and he had no need to hurry to Redwold. His sister had sent a groom with a dog-cart instead of coming to meet him in her capacious landau, a lack of attention for which he was grateful, since it left him his own master. He would have been less than human if he had not stopped at the Homestead, and being in his present frame of mind very human, he pulled up the eager homeward-going horse at the little wooden gate, and flung the reins to the groom.
“I am going to make a call here; wait five minutes, and if I am not out by that time take the horse to the inn and put him up for an hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
How lightly his feet mounted the steep garden path between the trim box borders! There were plenty of flowers in the garden now—sweet-smelling hyacinths, vivid scarlet tulips with wide open chalices, half full of rain; a snowy mesphilus flinging about its frail white blooms in the soft west wind; a crimson rhododendron making a blaze of colour.
The long, low cottage, with its massive porch, was covered with flowering creepers, yellow jasmine, pale pink japonica, scented white honeysuckle. The cottage looked like a bower, and seemed to smile at him as he went up the path. He had a childish fancy that he would rather live in that cottage with Eve for his wife than at Merewood, which was one of the prettiest and most convenient houses of moderate size in all Hampshire. What dwelling could ever be so dear as this quaint old cottage, bent under the burden of its disproportionate thatch, with lattice windows peeping out at odd levels, and with dormers like gigantic eyes under penthouse lids?
She was at home; everybody was at home, even that undomestic bird, the Colonel. They were all at tea in their one spacious parlour—windows open, and all the perfume of flowers and growing hedgerows and budding trees blowing into the room.
Colonel Marchant welcomed him with marked cordiality. The girls were evidently pleased at his coming.
“How good of you to call on us on your way from the station!” said Sophy. “Lady Hartley told us you were to be met by the afternoon train.”
Lo, a miracle! The five Miss Marchants were all dressed alike—severely, in darkest blue serge. The red Garibaldis, the yellow and brown stripes, the scarlet, the magenta, the Reckitt’s blue, which had made their sitting-room a battle-field of crude colours, had all vanished. In darkest serge, with neat white linen collars,the Miss Marchants stood before him, a family to whose attire the severest taste could not object.
Eve was the most silent of the sisters, but she had blushed vividly at his advent, and she was blushing still. She blushed at every word he addressed to her, and seemed to find a painful difficulty in handling the teapot and cups and saucers when she resumed her post at the tea-tray.
Vansittart asked them for the news of the neighbourhood. How had they managed to amuse themselves after the frost, when there was no more skating?
“We were awfully sorry,” said Sophy, “but the hunting men were awfully glad.”
“And had you any more balls?”
“No public ball—but there were a good many dances,” with half a sigh. “Lady Hartley gave one just before Lent, the only one to which we were invited, and I am happy to say it was out and away the best.”
“Lady Hartley has been more than kind to us,” said Eve, finding speech at last. “She is the most charming woman I ever met. You must be very proud of such a sister.”
“I am proud to know that you like her,” answered Vansittart, in a low voice.
He was sitting at her elbow, helping her by handing the cups and saucers, and very conscious that her hand trembled when it touched his.
“My daughter is right,” said the Colonel, with a majestic air; “Lady Hartley is the one lady in this neighbourhood—the one womanly woman. She saw my girls ignored, and she has made it her business to convince her neighbours that they are a little too good for such treatment. Other people have been prompt to follow her lead.”
“Oh, but it’s not for that we care. It is Lady Hartley’s friendship we value, not her influence on other people,” protested Eve eagerly.
“We are going to Redwold to-morrow afternoon,” said Jenny; “but I don’t suppose we shall see you, Mr. Vansittart. You will be shooting, or fishing, or something.”
“Shooting there is none, Miss Vansittart. The pheasants are a free and unfettered company in the copses, among the primroses and dog-violets. Man is no longer their enemy. And I never felt the angler’s passion since I fished for sticklebacks in the shrubbery at home.”
The Colonel chimed in at this point, as if thinking the conversation too childish.
He began to discuss the political situation—the chances of aby-election which was to come on directly after Easter. He expressed himself with the ferocity of an old-fashioned Tory. He would give no quarter to the enemy. He had just returned from Paris, he told Vansittart, and had seen what it was to live under a mobocracy.
“They have been obliged to shut up one of their theatres—cut short the run of the finest play that has been produced in the last decade, simply because their sans culottes object to any disparagement of Robespierre. There are a dozen incipient Robespierres in Paris at this day, I believe, only waiting for opportunity to burst into full bloom.”
He had been to Paris, then, thought Vansittart. He could afford to take his pleasure in that holiday capital, while his daughters were on short commons at Fernhurst.
“Was Paris very full?” asked Vansittart.
“I hardly know. I met a good many people I know. One meets more Englishmen than Parisians on the boulevards at this season. April is the Englishman’s month. Your neighbour, Mr. Sefton, was at the Continental—in point of fact, he and I went to Paris together.”
This explained matters to Vansittart. No doubt Sefton paid the bills for both travellers.
“Mr. Sefton is not a neighbour of mine, but of my sister’s,” he said. “My father and his father were good friends before I was born, but I know nothing of this gentleman.”
“A mutual loss,” replied the Colonel. “Sefton is a very fine fellow, as I told you the last time you were here. You can hardly fail to get on with him when you do make his acquaintance.”
“I saw him at the hunt ball, and I must confess that I was not favourably impressed by his manner.”
“Sefton’s manner is the worst part of him,” conceded Colonel Marchant. “He has been spoilt by Dame Fortune, and is inclined to be arrogant. An only child, brought up in the expectation of wealth, and taught by a foolish mother to believe that a landed estate and a fine income constitute a kind of royalty. Sefton might easily be a worse fellow than he is. For my own part, I cannot speak too warmly of him. He has been a capital neighbour, the best neighbour we had, until Lady Hartley was good enough to take a fancy to my girls.”
“I hope you don’t compare Lady Hartley with Mr. Sefton, father,” cried the impulsive Hetty. “There is more kindness in a cup of tea from Lady Hartley than in all the game, and fruit, and trout, and things with which Mr. Sefton loads us.”
“They are enthusiasts, these girls of mine,” said the Colonel, blandly. “Lady Hartley has made them her creatures.”
“Her name reminds me that I must be moving on,” said Vansittart. “I hope you will all forgive this invasion. I was anxious to learn how you all were. It seems a long time since I was in this part of the world.”
“It is a long time,” said Eve, almost involuntarily.
Those few words rejoiced his heart. They sounded like a confession that she had missed him and regretted him, since those long friendly walks and talks in the clear cold January afternoons. He had never in all their conversation spoken to her in the words of a lover, but he had shown her that he liked her society, and it might be that she had thought him cold and cowardly when he left her without any token of warmer feeling than this casual friendship of the roads, lanes, and family tea-table. To go away, and stay away for three months, and make no sign! A cruel treatment, if, if, in those few familiar hours, he had touched her girlish heart by the magnetic power of unspoken love.
He left the Homestead happy in the thought that she was not indifferent to the fact of his existence; that he was something more to her than a casual acquaintance.
He was to see her next day; and it would be his own fault if he did not see her the day after that; and the next, and the next; until the solemn question had been asked, and the low-breathed answer had been given, and she was his for ever. All was in his own hand now. He had but to satisfy himself upon one point—her acquaintance with Sefton, what it meant, and how far it had gone—and then the rest was peace, the perfect peace of happy and confiding love.
He was unfilial enough to be glad that his mother was not at Redwold. There would be no restraining influence, no maternal arm stretched out to pluck him from his fate. He would be free to fulfil his destiny; and when the fair young bride was won, it would be easy for her to win her own way into that motherly heart. Mrs. Vansittart was not a woman to withhold her affection from her son’s wife.
Lady Hartley appeared in the portico as the cart drove up to the door.
“What a fright you have given me!” she said. “Did anything happen to the train?”
“Nothing but what usually happens to trains.”
“But you are an hour late.”
“I called on Colonel Marchant. It never occurred to me that you could be uneasy on my account, or I should not have stopped on the way. I am very sorry, my dear Maud,” he concluded, as he kissed her in the hall.
“You are not cured of your infatuation, Jack.”
“Not cured, or likely to be cured, in your way. I have heard nothing but your praises, Maud. You seem to have been a fairy godmother to those motherless girls.”
“Have I not? How did you like their appearance? Did you see any improvement?”
“A monstrous improvement. They were all neatly dressed, and in one colour.”
“That was my doing, Jack.”
“Really! But how did you manage it, without wounding their feelings?”
“My tact, Jack, my exquisite tact,” cried Maud, gaily.
They were in her morning-room by this time, and Vansittart sank into a low armchair, prepared to hear all she had to tell. Maud had generally a great deal to say to her brother after an interval of severance.
“I’ll tell you all about it,” she began. “It grieved me to see those poor girls in their coats of many colours, or rather in their assemblage of colours among the five sisters, so I felt I must do something. I was always looking at them, and thinking how much better I could dress them than they dressed themselves, and quite as economically, mark you. So one day I said casually that I thought sisters—youthful sisters understood—looked to particular advantage when they were all dressed exactly alike, whereupon Eve, who is candour itself”—Vansittart’s heart thrilled at this praise—“declared herself entirely of my opinion, but she explained that she and her sisters had very little money to dress upon, and they were all great bargain-hunters, and could get most wonderful bargains at the great drapery sales, if they were not particular in their choice of colours. ‘And that is how we always look like a ragged regiment,’ said Eve, ‘but we certainly get good value for our poor little scraps of money.’”
“A girl who ought to be dressed like a duchess,” sighed Vansittart.
“Well, on this I read her one of my lay sermons. I told her that so far from getting good value for her money, she got very bad value for her money; that she and her sisters, in their thirst for stuff at a shilling a yard, reduced from three and sixpence, made themselves in a manner queens of shreds and patches. She was very ready to admit the force of my reasoning, poor child. And then she pleaded that her sisters were so young—they had no control over their feelings when they found themselves in a great drapery show. It seemed a kind of fairyland, where things were being given away. And then such a scramble, she tells me, women almost fighting with each other for eligible bits of stuff and last season’s finery. I told her that I had hardly ever seen the inside of a big shop, and that I hated shopping. ‘What,’ she cried, ‘you who are rich! I thought you would enjoy it above all things.’ I told her no; that Lewis andAllanby sent me one of their people, and I chose my gown from a pattern-book, and the fitter came and tried it on, and I had no more trouble about it; or that I went to my dressmaker, and just looked over her newest things in a quiet drawing-room, without any of the distracting bustle of a great shop.”
“My sweetest Maud, what a dear little snob she must have thought you!”
“I don’t think she did. She seemed pleased to know my ways. And then I told her that I should like to see her and her sisters all dressed alike, in one of my favourite colours; and then I told her that I knew of a most meritorious family—invented that moment—who were going to Australia, and whom I wanted to help. ‘In a colony, those bright colours your sisters wear would be most suitable,’ I said. ‘Will you make an exchange with me—just in a friendly way—give me as many of your bright gowns as you can spare, and I will give you a piece of good serge and a piece of the very best cloth in exchange?’”
“Did she stand that?” asked Vansittart.
“Not very well. She looked at me for a moment or two, blushed furiously, and then got up and walked to the window, and stood there with her back towards me. I knew that she was crying. I went over to her and put my arm round her neck and kissed her as if she had been my first cousin. I begged her to forgive me if I had offended. ‘I really want to help those poor girls who are going to Melbourne,’ I said; ‘and your bargains would be just the thing for them. They could get nothing half as good for the same money.’ I felt ashamed of myself the next moment. I had lied so well that she believed me.”
“Never mind, Maud; the motive was virtuous.”
“‘No, they couldn’t,’ she said; ‘not till next July. The sales are all over.’ And then, after a little more argument, she yielded, and it was agreed that I should drive over to the Homestead next morning, and we would hold a review of the frocks and furbelows, and whatever was suitable for my Australian emigrants I should take, giving the sisters fair value in exchange. Eve stipulated that it should be only fair value. Well, the review was capital fun. The girls were charming—evidently proud of their finery, expatiating upon the miraculous cheapness of this and that, and the genuineness of the sales at the best houses. They had sales on the brain, I think. Of course I left them all the gay frocks suitable for home evenings; but I swooped like a vulture on their outdoor finery. I had taken a large portmanteau over with me, and we crammed it with frocks and fichus and Zouave jackets for my Australians. I am sorry to say the portmanteau is still upstairs in the box-room. And now, Jack, you know the history of the serge frocks.”
“You are a dear little diplomatist; but I’m afraid you must have made Miss Marchant suffer a good deal before your transmutation was accomplished.”
“My dear Jack, that girl is destined for suffering—of that kind; small social stings, the sense of the contrast between her surroundings and those of other girls no better born, only better off.”
“She will marry and forget these evil days,” said Vansittart.
“Let us hope so; but let us hope that she will not marry you.”
“Why should you—or any one—hope that?”
“Because it ain’t good enough, Jack; believe me, it ain’t. She is a sweet girl—but her father’s character is the opposite of sweet. Hubert has made inquiries, and has been told, by men on whose good faith he can rely, that the Colonel is a black-leg; that there is hardly any dishonourable act that a man can do, short of felony, which Colonel Marchant has not done. He is well known in London, where he spends the greater part of his time. He is a hanger-on of rich young men. He shows them life. He wins their money—and like that other hanger-on, the leech, he drops away from them when he is gorged and they are empty. Can you choose the daughter of such a man for your wife?”
“I can, and do choose her, above all other women; and if she is as pure and true as I believe her to be, I shall ask her to be my wife. The more disreputable her father, the gladder I shall be to take her away from him——”
“And when her father is your father-in-law how will you deal with him?”
“Leave that problem to me. I am not an idiot, or a youth fresh from the University. I shall know how to meet the difficulty.”
“You will not have that man at Merewood, Jack,” cried Maud, excitedly, “to loaf about my mother’s garden—the garden that is hers now—and to play cards in my mother’s drawing-room?”
“You are running on very fast, Maud. No; if I marry Eve Marchant be assured I shall not keep open house for her father. He has not been so good a parent as to make his claim indisputable.”
“Such a marriage will break mother’s heart,” sighed Maud.
“You know better than that, Maud! You know that only a disreputable marriage would seriously distress my mother, and there can be nothing disreputable in a marriage with a good and pure-minded girl. I promise you that I will not offer myself to Eve Marchant until I feel assured of her perfect truth. There is only one point upon which I have the shadow of a doubt. It seemed to me, from certain trifling indications, that there had been some kind of flirtation between her and Sefton.”
“I cannot quite make that out, Jack,” answered Maud, thoughtfully. “I have seen them together several times since you left.There is certainly something, on his side. He pursues her in a manner—contrives to place himself near her at every opportunity, and puts on a confidential air when he talks to her. I have watched them closely in her interest, for I really like her. I don’t think she encourages him. Indeed I believe she detests him; but she is not as stand-offish as she might be; and I have seen her occasionally talking very confidentially with him—as if they had a secret understanding.”
“That’s it,” cried Vansittart, inwardly raging. “There is a secret, and I must be possessed of that secret before I confess my love.”
“And how do you propose to pluck out the heart of the mystery?”
“In the simplest manner—by questioning Eve herself. If she is the woman I think her she will answer me truthfully. If she is false and shifty—why then—I whistle her down the wind, and you will never hear more of this fond dream of mine.”
“Well, Jack, you must go your own way. You were always my master, and I can’t pretend to master you now. You’ll have an opportunity of seeing Eve and Mr. Sefton to-morrow. He is coming to my afternoon. I hope you’ll be civil to him.”
“As civil as I can. I’ll break no bounds, Maud; but I believe the man to be a scoundrel. If he were pursuing Eve with any good motive he would have spoken out before now.”
“Precisely my view of the case. It is shameful to compromise her by motiveless attentions. There goes the gong. I am glad we have had this quiet talk. You will not act precipitately, will you, Jack?” concluded his sister, appealingly, as she moved towards the door.
“I will act as I have said, Maud, not otherwise.”
“Well,” with a sigh, “I believe she will come through the ordeal, and that I am destined to have her for my sister.”
“You have made her love you already. That leaves less work for you in the future.”
“Poor mother! She will bewoefully disappointed.”
“True,” said Vansittart; “but as I couldn’t marry all her protégées, perhaps it is just as well I should marry none of them; and be assured I should not love Eve Marchant if I didn’t believe that she would be a good and loving daughter to my mother.”
“Every lover believes as much. It is all nonsense,” said Maud, as she ran off to her dressing-room.
Mr. Sefton made an early appearance at Lady Hartley’s afternoon. He arrived before the Marchants, and when there were only about a dozen people in the long drawing-room, and Vansittart guessed by the way he loitered near a window overlooking the drive that he was on the watch for the sisters.
Lady Hartley introduced her brother to Mr. Sefton, with the respect due to the owner of one of the finest estates in the county, a man of old family and aristocratic connections. Sefton was particularly cordial, and began to make conversation in the most amiable way, a man not renowned for amiability to his equals. The Miss Marchants were announced while he and Vansittart were talking, and Sefton’s attention began to wander immediately, although he continued the discussion of hopes and fears about that by-election which was disturbing every politician’s mind; or which at any rate served as a topic among people who had nothing to say to each other.
Only two out of the three grown-up sisters appeared, Eve and Jenny. The more diplomatic Sophy thought she improved her social status by occasional absence.
Sefton broke away from the conversation at the first opening, and went straight to Eve, who was talking to little Mr. Tivett, arrived that afternoon, no holidays being complete in a country house without such a man as Tivett, with his little thin voice, good nature, and willing to fetch and carry for the weaker sex.
Vansittart stood aloof for a little while, talking to a comfortable matron, who was evidently attached to the landed interest, as her conversation dwelt upon the weather in its relation to agriculture and the lambing season. He could see that Eve received Sefton’s advances with coldest politeness. On her part there was no touch of the earnest and confidential air which had so distressed him that afternoon by the lake. She talked with Sefton for a few minutes, and then turned away, and walked into the adjoining room, where the wide French window stood open to the garden. Vansittart seized his opportunity and followed her. He found her with her sister, looking at a pile of new books on a large table in a corner, and he speedily persuaded them that the flower-beds outside were better worth looking at than magazines and books which were no less ephemeral than the tulips and hyacinths.
He walked up and down the terrace with them for nearly half an hour, but never a hint of anything more than lightest society talk gave he in all that time. He had made up his mind to speak only after gravest deliberation, only in the calmest hour, when they two should be alone together under God’s quiet sky; but he so managed matters that Mr. Sefton had no further opportunity of offering his invidious attentions to Eve Marchant that afternoon. It was Vansittart who found seats for her and her sister in the drawing-room; it was Vansittart who carried their teacups, assisted only by Mr. Tivett, who tripped about with plates of chocolate biscuits, and buttered buns, with such activity as to appear ubiquitous.
The next day was Good Friday, a day of long church services and no visitors. On Saturday Vansittart went to Liss to spend theday with his mother, and to make a tour of grounds and home farm, a round of grave inspection which the mother and son took together, and during which they talked of many things, but not of Eve Marchant. If Mrs. Vansittart wondered that her son should have chosen to spend the recess at Redwold rather than at Merewood, she was too discreet to express either wonder or dissatisfaction. She was going to Charles Street directly after Easter, and Jack was to join her there for the London season; so she had no ground for dolefulness in being deprived of his society for just this one week.
She found him looking well, and, to her fancy, happier than he had looked for a long time. There was a ring of gaiety in his voice and laugh which she had missed of late years, and which she heard again to-day. They lunched together, and she drove him to the station in the late afternoon.
“It delights me to see you looking so well and so happy, Jack,” she said, as they walked up and down the platform.
“Does it, mother?” he asked earnestly. “Is my happiness really enough to gladden you? Are you content that I should be happy in my own way?”
There were some moments of silence, and then she said gravely, “Yes, Jack, I am content, for I cannot believe that your way would be a foolish way. You have seen enough of the world to judge between gold and dross, and you are not the kind of man to plunge wilfully into a morass, led by false lights.”
“No, no, mother, you may be sure of that. My star shall be a true star—no Jack o’ Lantern.”
The train steamed in opportunely, and cut short the conversation; but enough had been said, Vansittart thought, to break the ice; and it was evident to him that his mother had an inkling of the course which events were taking.
The next day was Easter Sunday, a day when the morning sun is said to dance upon the waters; a day when the dawn seems more glorious, when the flowers that deck the churches seem fairer than mere earthly flowers, when the swelling chords of the organ and the voices even of the village choir have a sweetness that suggests the heavenly chorus. To John Vansittart, at least, among those who worshipped in the village church that Easter Day, there seemed a gladness in all things—a pure and thrilling gladness as of minds attuned to holiness and ready to believe. He had read much of that new and widening school of thought which is gradually sapping the old foundations and pulling down the old bulwarks; but there was no remembrance of that modern school in his mind to-day as he stood up in the village church to join in the Easter hymn. His thoughts had resumed the simplicity of early years. He was able to believe and to pray like a little child.
He prayed to be forgiven for that unpremeditated sin of which the world knew not. He prostrated himself in heart and mind at the feet of the Christ who died for sinners. But he did not go to the Altar. The Easter Communion was not for him whose hands were stained with blood.
The Marchants were at the morning service, all five of them, fresh and blooming after their long walk, a bunch of English roses, redder or paler as Nature had painted each. Eve, tallest, fairest, loveliest, was conspicuous among the sisters.
“By Jove! how handsome that girl is!” whispered little Tivett, as he ducked to put away his hat.
He and Vansittart were sitting apart from the rest, the Redwold pew being full without them.
“I want to walk home with them after church,” whispered Vansittart, also intent upon the disposal of the Sunday cylinder. “Will you come too?”
“With pleasure.”
This was before the service began, before the priest and choir had come into the chancel.
The service was brief, a service of jubilant hymns and anthem and short flowery sermon, flowery as the chancel and altar, and pulpit and font, in all their glory of arums, azaleas, spireas, and lilies of the valley. The church clock was striking twelve as the major part of the congregation poured out. There was a row of carriages in the road, two of them from Redwold Towers; but Vansittart and Tivett declined the accommodation of landau or waggonette.
“We are going for a long walk,” said Mr. Tivett. “It’s such a perfect day.”
“But you will lose your lunch, if you go too far.”
“We must risk that, and make amends at afternoon-tea.”
“Tivett,” said Vansittart, when the carriages had driven off, “I am going to make a martyr of you. It will be three o’clock at the earliest when we get back to Redwold, and I know you enjoy your luncheon. It’s really too bad.”
“Do you think I regret the sacrifice in the cause of friendship? There go the Marchant girls, steaming on ahead. We had better overhaul them at once. Don’t mind me, Vansittart. I have been doing gooseberry ever since I wore Eton jackets. Only one word—Is it serious?”
“Very serious—sink or swim—Heaven or Hades.”
“And all in honour?”
“All in honour.”
“Then I am with you to the death. You want a long walk and a long talk with Miss Marchant; and you want me to take the whole bunch of sisters off your hands.”
“Just so, my best of friends.”
“Consider it done.”
They overtook the young ladies in the dip of the road, where a lane branches off to Bexley Hill. Here they stopped to shake hands all round, and to talk of the church, and the weather—quite the most exquisite Easter Sunday that any of them could remember, or could remember that they remembered, for no doubt memory severely interrogated would have recalled Easter Days as fair.
“Mr. Tivett and I are pining for a long walk,” said Vansittart, “so we are going to see you home—if you will let us—or, if you are not tied for time, will you join us in a ramble on Bexley Hill? It is just the day for the hill—the views will be splendid—and I know that you young ladies are like Atalanta. Distance cannot tire you!”
“We could hardly help being good walkers,” said Sophy, rather discontentedly. “Walking is our only amusement.”
Hetty and Peggy clapped their hands. “Bexley Hill, Bexley Hill,” they cried; “hands up for Bexley Hill.”
There were no hands lifted, but they all turned into the lane.
“We can go a little way just to look at the view,” assented Eve; and the younger girls went skipping off in their short petticoats, and the two elder girls were speedily absorbed in Mr. Tivett’s animated conversation, and Eve and Vansittart were walking alone.
“A little way.” Who could measure distance or count the minutes in such an exhilarating atmosphere as breathed around that wooded hillside in the balmy April morning? Every step seemed to take them into a finer air, and to lift their hearts with an increasing gladness. All around them rippled the sea of furze and heather, broken by patches of woodland, and grassy glades that were like bits stolen out of the New Forest, and flung down here upon this swelling hillside. Here and there a squatter’s cottage, with low cob wall and steep tiled roof, stood snug and sheltered in its bit of garden, under the shadow of a venerable beech or oak—here and there a little knot of children sprawled and sunned themselves in front of a cottage door. The rest was silence and solitude, save for the voices of those rare birds which inhabit forest and common land.
“Gussie,” whispered Vansittart, when they had passed one of these humble homesteads, and were ascending the crest of the hill, “do you think you could contrive to lose yourself—and the girls—for half an hour?”
“Of course I can. You will have to cooey for us when you want to see our faces again.”
This little conversation occurred in the rear of the five girls, who had scattered themselves over the hillside, every one believing in her own particular track as the briefest and best ascent.
Eve had climbed highest of all the sisters, by a path so narrow, and so hemmed in by bramble and hawthorn, that only one, and that one a dexterous climber, could mount at a time.
Vansittart followed her desperately, pushing aside the brambles with his stick. He was breathless when he reached the top, where she stood lightly poised, like Mercury. The ascent, since he stopped to speak to Tivett, had taken only ten minutes or so, but when he looked round him and downward over the billowy furze and rugged hillside there was not one vestige of Augustus Tivett or the four Miss Marchants in view.
“What can have become of them all?” questioned Eve, gazing wonderingly around. “I thought they were only just behind me—I heard them laughing a few minutes ago. Have they sunk into the earth, or are they hiding behind the bushes?”
“Neither. They are only going round the other side of the hill. They will meet us on the top.”
“It’s very silly of them,” said Eve, obviously distressed. “There is always some folly or mischief when Hetty is one of our party. Peggy is ever so much more sensible.”
“Don’t blame poor Hetty till you are assured she is in fault. I shouldn’t wonder if it were all Tivett’s doing. You must scold good little Tivett. I hope you don’t mind being alone with me for a quarter of an hour. I have been longing for the chance of a little serious talk with you. Shall we sit down for a few minutes on this fine old beech trunk? You are out of breath after mounting the hill.”
She was out of breath, but the hill was not the cause. Her colour came and went, her heart beat furiously. She was speechless with conflicting emotions—fear, joy, wonder, self-abasement.
They were on the ridge of the hill. In front of them, far away towards the south stretched the Sussex Downs, purple in the distance, save for one pale shimmering streak of light which meant the sea. Below them lay the Sussex Weald, rippling meadows, and the vivid green of spacious fields where the young corn showed emerald bright in the sun—pools and winding streamlets, copses and grey fallows, cottage roofs and village spires, a world lovely enough for Satan to use as a lure for the tempted.
But for Vansittart that world hardly existed. He had eyes, thoughts, comprehension for nothing but this girl who sat mutely at his side, the graceful throat bending a little, the shy violet eyes looking at the ground.
So far there had been no word of love between them, not one word, not one silent indication, such as the tender pressure of hands, or even the looks that tell love’s story. But love was in the air they breathed, love held them and bound them each to each, and each knew the other’s secret.
“Miss Marchant,” begun Vansittart with ceremonious gravity, “will you forgive me if I ask you a few questions which may seem somewhat impertinent on my part?”
This was so different from what her trembling heart had expected that she paled as at a sudden danger. He was watching her intently, and was quick to perceive that pallor.
“I don’t think you would ask me anything really impertinent,” she faltered.
“Not with an impertinent motive, be assured. Well, I must even risk offending you. I want you to tell me frankly what you think of Mr. Sefton.”
At this the pale cheeks flushed, and she looked angry.
“I don’t like him, though he is my father’s friend, and though he is always very kind—obtrusively kind. He has even offered Sophy and me his horses to ride—to have the exclusive use of two of his best hacks, if father would let us ride them; but of course that was out of the question. We could not have accepted such a favour from any one.”
“Not from any one but an affianced lover,” said Vansittart. “Do you know, Miss Marchant, when I first saw you and Mr. Sefton together at the ball I thought you must be engaged.”
“How very foolish of you!”
“He had such an air of taking possession of you, as if he had a superior claim to your attentions.”
“Oh, that is only Mr. Sefton’s masterful way. He cannot forget the extent of his acres or the length of his pedigree.”
“But he seems—always—on such confidential terms with you.”
“I have known him a long time.”
“Yes, but his manner—to a looker-on—implies something more than friendship. Oh, Miss Marchant, forgive me if I presume to question you. My motive is no light one. Last January by the lake I saw you and that man meet, with a look on both sides of a preconcerted meeting. I heard, accidentally, some few words which Mr. Sefton spoke to you, while you were walking with him by the lake; and those words implied a secret understanding between you and him—something of deep interest of which the outer world knew nothing. Be frank with me, for pity’s sake. Speak openly to me to-day, from heart to heart, if you never speak to me again. Is not there something more between you and Wilfred Sefton than an everyday friendship?”
“Yes,” she answered, “there is something more. Thereisa secret understanding—not much of a secret, but Mr. Sefton has taken advantage of it to offer me meaningless attentions which I detest, and which, I dare say, ill-natured people may talk about. Theywould be sure to think that Mr. Sefton could have no serious intentions about me, that he was only carrying on an idle flirtation.”
“And if he were serious—if he asked you to be his wife?”
“To live in that grand house; to rule over all those acres; to have a wafer-space on that long pedigree! Could Colonel Marchant’s daughter refuse such a chance?”
“Would Colonel Marchant’s daughter accept it?”
“Not this daughter,” answered Eve, gaily. “I might hand him on to Sophy, perhaps. Poor Sophy hankers after the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.”
Her gaiety delighted her lover. It told of an unburdened conscience—a heart at peace with itself.
“Tell me what it was you overheard, Mr. Eavesdropper, that afternoon by the lake?” she asked.
“I heard him say to you, very earnestly, ‘It was a false scent, you see;’ and then he expressed his sorrow for your disappointment.”
“You have a good memory. I, too, remember those words, ‘It was a false scent.’ It was. He had need to be sorry for my disappointment, for he had cheated me with false hopes.”
“About what? About whom?”
“About my brother.”
“Your brother? I did not know you had a brother.”
“We don’t talk about him in a general way. He has been a wanderer over the earth for many years. He was never with us at Fernhurst. He and my father had a terrible quarrel before we left Yorkshire—chiefly about his college debts, I believe. There seemed to be dreadful difficulties at Cambridge. My father used all his influence to get poor Harold out of the country, and succeeded in getting him a berth in the Cape Mounted Police. Parting with him perhaps went nearer to break my mother’s heart than our loss of home and fortune.”
“It must have been a hard parting.”
“It was indeed hard. He went away in disgrace. My father would not speak to him or look at him. He lived at the Vicarage during those last weeks before the ship sailed away with him to Africa. The Vicar and his wife were very good to him, but everybody felt that he was under a cloud. I fear—I fear that he had done something very wrong at Cambridge—something for which he might have been arrested—for he seemed to be in hiding at the Vicarage. And he left one night, and was driven over to Hull, where he went on board a boat bound for Hamburg, and he was to sail from Hamburg for the Cape. My mother and I went to say good-bye to him that last evening, after dark; the others were too young to be told anything; they hardly remember him. He kissed us, and cried over us, and promised mother that for her sake hewould try to do well—that he would bear the hardest life in order to redeem his character. He promised that he would write to her by every mail. The dog-cart was at the door while he was saying this. The Vicar came into the room to hurry him away. I have never seen my brother since that night.”